As most of you know since retiring in 2007 I have been on a quest to “collect countries”. And I like to joke it was the fault of my wife, Yvonne, who stated emphatically that I needed to have a hobby once I retired! She regrets that challenge to this day. In the last 15 years I have gradually added new countries to my list which now stands at 94, because of our recent visit to Malta. In 2019 I saw a cruise that traveled from Lisbon, Portugal to Cape Town, South Africa on a route that followed the west coast of the African continent, visiting various African countries along the way. It turned out there would be 8 countries that I have not visited (and not likely to because they are not on the normal list of countries that people want to travel to). Although the cruise was 24 days in length (our longest has been 21 days) Yvonne knew how excited I was about it and agreed we should take it, so we booked the cruise for November 2020 (the itinerary is rarely offered and only by a couple of cruise lines as they reposition a ship to another part of the world).

Well, we all know what happened next!  2020 brought the Covid outbreak and the cruise industry pretty much shut down, so the itinerary was not offered. It is now 2022 and I am happy to report we leave today on the rescheduled November departure on the Regent Seven Seas Voyager!

One of the perks when sailing with Regent is that they include business class air on the international portion of your trip. We are flying on Lufthansa from Seattle to Frankfurt with a connection to Lisbon. For this trip we chose a concierge level room on the ship which includes a one night hotel stay in Lisbon prior to boarding our ship. We always plan to arrive a day early for any cruise (in case there are any travel glitches) so this works out nicely for us.

Hopefully, because of the many days at sea and with a decent internet connection on the ship I will be more timely with reporting our travels as we go! Time will tell.